The Peace Deal That Is All Israel

Stanley L. Cohen launches a broadside in Counterpunch against Jared Kushner.

Photo by U.S. Embassy Jerusalem | CC BY 2.0
Honor, like integrity, is not a commodity, like a gilded condominium in New York City for sale to the highest bidder. Nor does it license a messenger to whisper through a backdoor that which cannot be said through the front because it’s been closed for want of fairness and respect.

Yet, having been rebuked by Palestinian leadership due to the shameful move of the US Embassy to the capital of Palestine that is precisely what Jared Kushner has tried to do with his deceitful appeal to the Palestinian people in his recent interview with Al Quds.

It would be far too easy to dismiss Kushner as a mere partisan novice who, with his family, has spent a lifetime extolling the primacy of the Jewish state in the chase of personal greed, framed as religious principle. To them, like other Zionists, Palestine is but an impediment in a supremacist reach that began with the blessings of the United States well before the onset of the Nakba.

Jared Kushner, the Kushner family, and its Kushner Companies holdings are deeply tied to the financing of Israeli occupation in Palestine and the exploitation of Palestinians.

Jared Kushner has been a regular visitor to Israel since his childhood. As a 16-year-old, he and thousands of other Jewish teenagers were led on a tour of the Auschwitz concentration camp by Benjamin Netanyahu, himself, waving Israeli flags along the way. At the end, they flew to Israel as part of their “Zionist rebirth.”

The Kushners consider Netanyahu part of the family, and it is often told of how the future Prime Minister was, during Jared’s boyhood, a frequent overnight guest in the Kushner New Jersey home and even slept in his room.

The elder, Charles Kushner, has given steadily to Israeli projects including schools and the IDF, and even to Likud Party campaign coffers. Kushner Companies use Israeli financing extensively… including tens of millions from Israeli banks, insurance firm investment funds, and private Israeli investors… to fund its empire of real estate debt. These financial ties continue to the present day and are inextricably woven through the operations and maintenance of Jared Kushner’s sizable fortune. Kushner cements his family’s long commitment to Zionism in charitable contributions to West Bank settlers (including the notorious, radical settlement Bet-El, built on land confiscated by the IDF in the 1970s from impoverished Palestinian farmers driven off at gunpoint), and even to the IDF itself.

With foreseeable ease, Kushner, in his interview in Al Quds, embraces the standard Zionist blame game which reduces Palestinians to mindless observers of a history over which they have no personal interest, input or participation. To him, it is all about “bad leadership” and not, at all, a 70 year old colonial project long supported and funded by the United States. It continues unabated to date.

Nowhere is this more vivid than in his simple minded… almost childlike… view of life and death in Gaza. To Kushner, two million people are hostage not to the calculated systematic state terror of Israel, but rather to the PA and Hamas who choose, of their own volition, to exploit other Palestinians as mere “pawns [in] a narrative of “victimhood” so as to garner a “feel good” moment of sympathetic press while they bury their own sons and daughters.

That Kushner would speak of headlines in lieu of substance should come as no surprise. He is, after all, the anointed mouthpiece of an administration consumed not with deeds of enlightened, meaningful concern and consequence, but rather the cheap banner of the moment or the mindless tweet of the day.

Nowhere in Kushner’s peek at Gaza does Israel bear any responsibility, whatsoever, for the world’s largest outdoor concentration camp which has grown exponentially more and more sadistic day by day and year by year under its complete occupation.

Predictably, Kushner sees the collective suffer that is Gaza as not the result of Israeli destruction and embargo but, rather, an economy that has been held hostage to a handful of tunnels and some defensive “rockets” that have caused no harm, at all, but to pierce Israel’s geopolitical veneer of invincibility.

Indeed, to speak, as he does, of long term investment and economic growth as the linchpin of Gaza’s immediate need and survival is to blink the reality of its daily anguish. Dramatically absent in his sophomoric cause and effect analysis is any acknowledgment by Kushner of Israel’s complete and punitive check over the flow of food, water, medicine and movement in and out of Gaza.

True to form, he is wholly silent about the Jewish state’s calculated control over Gaza’s broken infrastructure intended to punish and manipulate the fundamental right of Palestinians to obtain clean water and energy to power their homes, hospitals and schools. To argue that these core human rights are somehow contingent upon investment and reconstruction opportunities a decade down the road is little more than a selective rewrite fueled by Kushner’s own feel good denial.

In the partisan preach of the White House, all Gaza need do is to surrender its political will and basic right to self determination and, like the fractured nuclear treaty with Iran and the newly prettied dƩtente with North Korea, all will be well overnight, as if by magic. Elsewhere, the well crafted message of Kushner ranges from sheer naivetƩ to utter falsehood.

Thus, while he is quick to cast the humanitarian crises in Gaza upon the political winds of prior administrations alone, at the very moment Kushner spoke at the opening pomp at the US Embassy in Jerusalem, thousands of defenseless Palestinian men, women and children were mowed down for the temerity of exercising their right to demonstrate in Gaza. And while Israeli snipers may have worn a uniform that day, decorated with the crest of the Star of David, there can be no doubt that, inside, the label itself said made in America.

Even before Donald Trump took office, his son-in-law was busy trying to illegally intervene on behalf of Israel as he tried to get member states of the UN Security Council to stop a vote on a resolution critical of Israel’s illegal settlement policy.

Following his inauguration, among his first acts, Trump froze the transfer of $221m in discretionary USAID funds for emergency humanitarian aid for Gaza. At other times, he has shown unprecedented unilateral support for Israel ranging from threats to close the PLO office in Washington to freezing $65 million in US funds to UNRWA for critical services for Palestinian refugees . . . to a threat to suspend all money for Palestine “… unless they sit down and negotiate peace.”

Recently, the U.S. vetoed a Security Council resolution calling for international protective measures for the people of Gaza that won the backing from 10 of its other member states. Earlier, the U.S. vetoed a resolution that stated “… any decisions and actions which purport to have altered… the character, status or demographic composition of the Holy City of Jerusalem have no legal effect, are null and void and must be rescinded in compliance with relevant resolutions of the Security Council.” Just last week the U.S. withdrew from the UN Human Rights Council citing the group’s “political bias” against Israel.

The United States has, for decades, posed as a neutral interlocutor in the so-called “peace process” … claiming to broker a just peace for Palestinians even as it armed Israel and abetted its steady expansion into Palestinian lands. To maintain the fiction of its “referee” role, successive White House administrations of both parties have typically deployed well-meaning, eminent envoys with deep diplomatic pedigree and the appearance of fairness… even sincerity… all the while blocking any international action against Israel’s illegal settlements and bank-rolling the IDF with billions from U.S. taxpayers.

This charade held sway over forty years of the true U.S. Policy… to build its client state, Israel, into a fortress and regional military power capable of furthering American interests… as the Israelis pursued their agenda of dispossessing Palestinians, stealing their land and imprisoning or killing them. It should be clear, now, that the U.S. never intended to support any Palestinian statehood. American bad faith suffuses the wreckage of the two-state solution with the stench of betrayal and death.

Today, there is no longer any need for the charade or even for any diplomats. Jared Kushner, an Orthodox Jewish real estate developer, arrives, now, as the latest American Mideast envoy… a man so thoroughly vested in the success of Zionism that no one can seriously accept him as anything but a rank salesman for the Israeli dream.

In this respect, he fits the Trumpian mold of “trolling” the opposition: appoint the most objectionable person to the role for which he is least suited, and watch your enemies foam at the mouth in outrage. Kushner’s job here is to disrupt and shatter the genteel tradition of “middle east peace”… a polite Western-powers parlor game… and finish it. Trump’s intent is to pull American interests completely and irrevocably to Israel’s side and render any future American negotiator position impossible. After Trump, there will be no more “peace process”… just as there will be no American credibility in international relations.

The U.S. State Department is gutted and staffed by amateurs as Trump plays a one-man-band when it comes to his catastrophic style of diplomacy. Why would any Palestinian listen to Jared Kushner? Even if he promised the world with a side of falafel, his father-in-law can, and will, take it away with a single tweet the following day.

Kushner, in his interview, insults Palestinians and offers only economic vassalage in his vision of a high-tech, economic empowerment zone… Silicon Valley on the Med. Palestinians, stripped of sovereignty, civil and human rights, and any political future, can only serve Israelis as a captive labor force with no agency or control. This is the “deal” America’s latest envoy offers… accept plantation slavery or cease to exist. The Trump agenda has succeeded in burying the two-state solution. Palestinians will return to the barricades and prepare for resistance.

To walk down memory lane from Oslo is to take a sure path of broken promises and empty tease accompanied not by good faith but the wail of endless funerals where martyred young women and men have been laid to rest for little more than the courage of their Palestinian voice.

The notion the United States can or will play a role as a fair and honest broker in seeing that justice be had for Palestinians is so much doctored myth and little else.

It is mocked by its own silence as Israel has illegally annexed much of the occupied West Bank since Oslo and imprisoned well over a hundred thousand Palestinians who have simply dared to seek justice and equality. Many hundreds of others have lost their lives to settler violence or at the hands of the IDF. During the same period tens of thousands of civilians have been killed or injured by repeated onslaughts on Gaza.

Like his father-in-law, Jared Kushner is very much the burglar who would break into your home to steal your most precious belongings and then promise to return them in exchange for your child. Filled with hollow promise and little more, make no mistake about it Kushner speaks to Palestine not just as a delivery boy for Donald Trump, but as a rubber stamp for Netanyahu and his age old colonial project. To the lot, the “grand” deal has nothing to do with the ends of justice but is all about personal partisan profit.


Stanley L Cohen is a lawyer and human rights
activist in New York City. 

He has done extensive work in the Middle East
and Africa. 


Follow Stanley Cohen on Twitter @StanleyCohenLaw


38 comments:

  1. The State of Israel was not a colonial-settler project but a project to liberate the Jewish people from the millennial long persecution by the Gentile world culminating in the extermination of European Jewry in the Shoah/Holocaust. Btw, I have no brief for Jared Kushner's "peace" proposals nor, obviously, his father-in-law.

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  2. Barry,

    Just fuck the inhabitants already in British mandated Palestine eh?

    "a project to liberate the Jewish people from the millennial long persecution by the Gentile world culminating in the extermination of European Jewry in the Shoah/Holocaus"

    Shove that up your hole, The RC church may have only removed Deicide in the 60's and the German's took the Austrian's gobshittery as gospel but the rest of us didn't give a fuck.

    Besides, how do two wrongs make a right?

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  3. Steve R

    Both Jewish and Arab communities as indigenous peoples of the Middle East (like the Kurds, Assyrians, Turkmen) are entitled to exercise self-determination through a two state solution which might have come into being had not the Palestinian leadership rejected such proposals in 1937, 1947 and 2000. I am no defender of Likud expansionist nationalism (nor of any ethno-nationalism) but this constant delegitimization the State of Israel's existence and its origins needs to be refuted using evidence not personal abuse (I mean you, Steve)

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  4. "The State Of Israel" didn't exist before 1948 and even then only after a terrorist insurrection. Pretty dodgy legitimization.

    And those proposals negated Palestinians right of return so to appease Israeli concerns over demographs, ie, they wanted to ensure their majority.

    It's a bit hard to trust Israel when it says one thing but does another.

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  5. Steve R


    The State of Israel came into existence in 1948 after a vote by the UN General Assembly in November. This "terrorist insurrection" was a cause celebre for the anti-imperialist left of the time and for many Irish nationalists (Michael Collins was an inspiration for the Irgun)


    I do not condone many of the actions taken by Jewish irregular forces during their independence struggle but many atrocities were committed by Arabs as well such as the massacre of the medical convoy after the Deir Yassim atrocity. But nor do I condone the actions of the IRA in the years 1919-1921 but I do not contest the legitimacy of the independent Irish state that came into being as a result of those actions.


    But to return to the question of Israel's origins? The question to be asked of anti-Israel obsessives: where were Jews fleeing the Shoah/Holocaust and earlier pogroms supposed to go to?

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  6. Barry,
    You're right the Arab nations fucked up, in hindsight the previous deals were far more favourable . What does that leave? Should Palestines be forgot about for the misjudgments of their fathers? should they be slaughtered? In this debate pro Israelis like yourself always claim not to defend violence then in the same breath use history to defend it. What would it take for you to seriously condemn Israeli war crimes? Not just use blanket statements "i don't support expansionism" or whatever. I have no love for Hamas, no loyalty to Palestine, if the roles were reversed i'd be every bit as outraged at Palestine as I am at Israel. The state of Israel is going nowhere, it's defended by the world's elite military. It doesn't need you to defend it's legitmitacy. The gestapo are over 70 years gone, their crackpot social programes consigned to history. The state of Israel is under no serious threat. Iran would be no more if it dared, Palestine's no more, Syria's in turmoil and Lebanon is weak. Israel is safe so why can't you be objective and be genuinely upset when a professional soldier looks through the most hi tech of sniper scope and murder a protestor? Why the need to remind us of history we're very aware of?

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  7. Barry,

    I would have carved out a chunk of Germany and created a space for them there. Gave them arable land, serving a dual function of reminding the bloody Germans of what they did-or looked the other way from.

    Would have saved this bloody nonsense in the Middle East!

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  8. David

    I will condemn war crimes perpetrated by any actor be it Britain and America in Iraq; Assad and Putin in Syria; Saudi led coalition in Yemen etc, etc, etc. I will condemn the shooting of any unarmed protestor by any security force be in on the Gaza border, or in Caracas ofr in Managua etc etc etc. But it has to be said that many (but by no means all) protestors at the Gaza border fence were armed with offensive weapons and had the intention of attacking Jews had they been allowed to break through unlike the massacred civil rights demonstrators on Bloody Sunday and Sharpeville both of which have been inappropriately cited as comparators with the bloodshed on the Gaza border fence. Hamas knew what was likely to happen with the Right to Return march, are happy to reap the emotional capital from it and so must bear some of the responsibility for the blood shed.

    In short I will condemn Israeli war crimes when documented and proved by reputable and unbiased international bodies.

    Regarding the legitimacy of the State of Israel, it is been a global campaign to delegitimate Israel by jihadi, pro-=Palestinian and contemporary left anti-Semites that, among other things, has generated the current antisemitism crisis in the British Labour Party. So it is very much my business as a Corbyn-sceptic member of Labour and as an antiracist to oppose contemporary antisemitism which is very much alive; to defend the right of Israel to exist while taking issue with the right-wing ethno-nationalism of Netanyu (such as proposing to build Jewish only villages) In this I am in step with the definition of antisemitism by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance which says that criticism of Israel cannot be construed as anti-Semitic if it judges Israel according to the same standards applied to other states but that to say that the creation of the State of Israel was a racist endeavour.


    So, David, as an anti-antizionist I do not defend violence perpetrated by an actor in the Middle East and do not believe that any national community should be "slaughtered". I just want to counter the more extreme arguments put forward by certain pro-Palestinian advocates (Palestine Solidarity Campaign being one example)

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  9. " The State of Israel came into existence in 1948 after a vote by the UN General Assembly in November. "

    In a word or three, that is total bollicks. The State of modern day Israel came into existence over a dinner party shortly after Walter Rothschild received the 5th draft of Balfours 67 word declaration. Other places discussed were Uganda, parts of the caribbean and parts of Russia were also floated. Part of the family cautioned against setting up a Zionist homeland in Palestine but they lost the debate/vote. WW2 had sweet fuck all to do with anything. What school books also leave out for the most part is the Jewish dispora who inhabit Israel today by and large are Eastern European Zionists....Don't take my word for it. listen to Jacob Rothschild explain why Balfours declaration was addressed to Walter Rothschild and why it is the single most important document within modern day Israel. The UN stamp of approval was all for the optics...............

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  10. Frankie

    I prefer to deal with the historical record rather than with the current anti-Semitic meme - the supposed power of the Rothschilds.

    Yes there were alternative places proposed for a Jewish homeland but the persecution of Jews in East-Central Europe in the 1930s and 1940s culminating in the Final Solution meant that the Zionists won the day their case being helped immeasurably by the slamming of doors by the UK and US to the future inmates of the death camps and by the 1939 UK White Paper limiting Jewish immigration to Palestine. But of course such events do not fit easily into the contemporary left and Islamist antisemitic narrative of the State of Israel being a racist, colonial project.

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  11. I prefer to deal with the historical record rather than with the current anti-Semitic meme - the supposed power of the Rothschilds.

    Historical facts such as the misinformation taught in schools and colleges across the island and beyond? Or how the word anti semite has been bastardized to mean anti Jew...? I notice you are still spouting how the UN set up a Jewish homeland because of the way the Nazi's treated Jews I prefer to deal with historical fact. I can't airbursh the fact that Balfour after five drafts, wrote a letter containing 67 words that gave the Jews a place to call home, and addressed it to Walter Rothschild. What was up for debate was what piece of land to take. And some within the family objected to Palestine, but lost the argument over dinner. And it was decided long before 1933 when Hitler and his hench men pulled off a false flag operation when they torched the Reichstag.

    And there is no supposed power of the Rothschild family. They own most of the banks, media outlets, air we breathe, funded both side in wars from Napoleon onwards. (some say they were funding both sides of wars before Napoleonic wars). There is nothing supposed about their power or wealth. Watch the video again Barry, listen to what Jacob Rothchild said.......It (Jewish home land) was decided, done and dusted in 1917.........

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  12. Frankie

    OED definition of antisemitism: "hostility to or prejudice against Jews" End of.

    The comments beneath that video with their paranoia about the Illuminati, age-old conspiracy theories about Jewish power and support for Nazism tell me all I need to know about where you are coming from in this debate.

    Fact is that the driver behind Zionism (for which I am no more an advocate than any other nationalism) was the persecution of Jews in Tsarist Russia and Eastern Europe.

    A little more empirical evidence (preferably not gleaned from sites like Infowars) ab out how the Rothschilds control of most of the banks and media outlets and "the air we breathe" might help me engage more with the case you are making,


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  13. Barry,
    Even in your reponse, you talked about armed Palestinians, that isn't the point. Snipers deliberately targeted unarmed protesters. If pro Israeli advocates could just condemn that without clinging on to some slight provocation as to water down murder, they would become a lot less partisan and more logical in my view. I know what you mean about the Rothschilds being potrayed as cartoon villians. On the other hand to say they have no influence at all is
    equally as dumb. Financial sector families, Jewish or not, Carnegies, Morgan, Ford all had a degree of political influence.
    I don't know any thing about anti semitism in the Labour, don't pay them any heed, so you'd have to educate me there. I would say, obviously, don't equate criticism of Israel with anti semitism.

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  14. David

    Where IDF snipers deliberately targeted unarmed civilians then yes they should be prosecuted with the full rigours of Israeli domestic and international law. But I cannot ignore the involvement of Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the whole dreadful episode which makes comparisons with Bloody Sunday and Sharpeville preposterous.

    Regarding antisemitism in the Labour Party, since Jeremy Corbyn became leader, there has been a veritable tsunami of allegations of Labour Party members who follow Corbyn posting vile posts on social media drawing upon anti-Semitic tropes such as Holocaust denial, Zionist power over the media, Israel setting up ISIS and being behind 9/11 and threats to kill Jewish Labour MPs under cover of pro-Palestinian advocacy.


    As it is late I will discuss this matter again. Suffice to say that many Jews feel that the Labour Party has become a cold house for them with this week Dame Margaret Hodge MP who lost a grandparent, uncle and cousins in the Holocaust accusing Corbyn to his face of being "a fucking anti-Semite and racist" over Labour's refusal to endorse in full the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's definition of antisemitism which does not encompass criticism of Israel.

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  15. Barry,
    OED definition of antisemitism: "hostility to or prejudice against Jews" End of.

    Barry, chill out, it's the weekend. Has the thought ever entered your head that they are wrong and the real anti semites are the European Jews? You are aware Semite refers to a group of languages with their origins in the Middle East and nothing else. Now the small detail that a couple or three German Scholars in the late 1780's decided to prefix 'anti' onto semetic and spin it to mean anti jew, isn't up for debate.

    My problem is I know what semite means. And if someone wants to misinterpret words or give them a completely different meaning, does than mean Anti Semite inculdes the Semetic Jews or just Adul and his prayer mat and any one opposed to Zionism?


    This video like the first video will not contain the names Alex or Jones neither will it mention the words Illuminati, conspiracy or theory. It is a 20 minute video about the comments Helen Thomas made calling for European Jews to go home. And her comments which I totally agree with are backed up with 18 mintues of photographs that clearly show what the difference between Arab Jews, Uganda Jews, Anti Semetic European Jews, Chinese Jews. are. There is no commentary only a description of each photograph...I would advise you to watch all of it Barry.

    Fact is that the driver behind Zionism (for which I am no more an advocate than any other nationalism) was the persecution of Jews in Tsarist Russia and Eastern Europe.

    So eastern european Zionist Jews, think it's ok to persecute the local Semites in Palestine because their grandfathers got a very bad deal from Tsarist Russia? Why has Abul got to pay the price for? Let's face it Adul's grandfather didn't gas anyone or carry out live human experiments in the Nazi death camps. Barry once WW2 was over and the Russians had finished raping not only German women, who exactly was persecuting the Jews in Germany? The Allied forces? Why didn't they stay put or simply go back to what ever part of liberated Nazi free Europe they came from?

    A little more empirical evidence (preferably not gleaned from sites like Infowars) about how the Rothschilds control of most of the banks and media outlets and "the air we breathe"

    You are in front of Google..Do your own research sometimes.

    help me engage more with the case you are making,comments beneath that video with their paranoia about the Illuminati, age-old conspiracy theories about Jewish power and support for Nazism tell me all I need to know about where you are coming from in this debate.

    I never mentioned any of the subjects you mentioned. I didn't ask you to read the comments after the Jacob Rothschild video either explaining how Walter got a letter from Balfour in 1917 and the Rothschild family talked over what country to occupy and they decided on Palestine and renamed it Israel. If you want to fill the space between your ears with Alex and infowars and youtube comments, it's your space not mine.

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  16. Frankie

    Abul's political leadership in the form of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem was an avowed pro-Nazi, visited Hitler in Berlin; accompanied Himmler to Auschtwitz and helped to set up an SS Bosnian Muslim brigade to fight on the Eastern Front for the Nazis. Had the Wehrmacht been successful in in the North African campaign then they would have made a bee-line for Palestine where the Jewish population would have been on a one-way ticket back to Europe and the SS's guesthouses in Auschtwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor, Mauthausen etc no doubt with the active collaboration of the local Arab population.

    You ask who exactly was persecuting Jews in Germany after the end of the War. The answer that there were no Jews to persecute in liberated Europe as the Jewish presence had been almost completely erased. You do recall the numbers involved - 6 million murdered Jews and every single evidence of their existence eradicated. Do you seriously think that return to communities erased from the face of the earth often with willing local collaborators was an option for those liberated from Belsen-Bergen etc.

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  17. Frankie

    So all Israeli Jews of European descent should be deported back to where their ancestors were gassed and immolated. Back to a continent that is putting up the drawbridge against waves of other Middle Eastern refugees; back to a continent where anti-Jewishness is alive and kicking again

    Let's take this logic a stage further. How about sending back every one of the USA's diasporic communities (Irish, Italian, German, Scottish etc) because of the genocide of the Native America nations and/or because of the institutionalised racism against the African American populace.


    I assure I find such suggestions beyond the Pale just as I found Helen Thomas' Judenfrei proposals for Israel repugnant and a terrible blight on what was a courageous and path breaking reporter. Lastly I have to ask why this obsession with Israel with so many Irish people and sections of the Left (I belong to both parishes)

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  18. Barry,

    Lastly I have to ask why this obsession with Israel with so many Irish people and sections of the Left (I belong to both parishes)

    First, I will clear up that point from my own perspective. I have been having these types of interactions on and off 26/27 yrs. Fairly often with my oldest daughter who is an Irish/French Jew also with her mother who is a French Jew, her grandmother who is a French Jew and Claude (who could easily pass for Abduls brother) her grandfather is a Morracan Semitic Jew.

    So all Israeli Jews of European descent should be deported back to where their ancestors were gassed and immolated.

    No, I mean non semetic Ashkenazi Eastern European Jews go back to the towns and villages they where happily living in before getting persecuted in Germany, Russia or what part of Europe they were frog marched from into death camps. After all Europe was liberated. There was no Nazi threat from Abduls Grandfather, Hitler or Himler any more. As for the mad Nazi scientists who did horrible things to millions of people (not all were Jews), the best were a given a free pass to America under Operation Paper Clip. Grasp that small fact Barry, the best Nazi scientists who designed gas chambers, worked on human live experiements and the rest for Hitler were given a free pass to Washington DC. No questions asked.

    I assure I find such suggestions beyond the Pale just as I found Helen Thomas' Judenfrei proposals for Israel repugnant

    What Helen Thomas and millions more are asking is for European Jews to go home and for other European Jews to please stay put in whatever part of this rock you are on and stop occupying Palestine. She is not asking, calling for or implying that Jews anywhere to be exterminated from the face of the earth. Stop distorting words. Watch the video again Barry. Its just over 20mins of your life and you will learn more than you learnt in any History class.

    Abul's political leadership in the form of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem was an avowed pro-Nazi, visited Hitler in Berlin;

    What about the future British Queen who was pictured in 1933 giving a Nazi salute while Hitler was slowly implementing Balfour's declaration to Walter Rothschild of a Jewish homeland under the 1933 Haavara Agreement, that gave European Jews a freebie to Palestine to implement the declaration Balfour wrote in 1917. Can we throw in Prescot Bush another Nazi supporter who's son and grandson both went on to become President of the USA. What about the British Queens alledged who 'grandson' appeared dressed as Nazi SS officer at a party. Do you think Harry gave a thought about some of the horrors committed in WW2 while his shirt was being ironed? Was it a Freudian slip and was it really a salute to his 'Germany heritage' How many more Nazi sympathizers do you want Barry....

    Barry if you want to buy into the line the UN debated what to do with the Jews after WW2 and mandated a resolution to put them in Palestine be my guest. On the subject of UN mandated resolutions, can you remind me how many Israel have openly flouted, ignored. Or you going to admit the fact Eastern European Zionists Jews are Anti Semetic and hate Abdul and his prayer mat the sameway as Nazi Germany and Tzarist Russia hated Ashkenazi Eastern European Jews .

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  19. Barry,
    On this TPQ piece you said..."I find the author's Vichy comparisons utterly inappropriate. For France, like much of Europe in the 1940s, was invaded and occupied by an eliminationist and utterly barbaric totalitarian power."

    Isn't that what European Zionist Jews have been doing openly since the 1940's in Palestine imposing 'an eliminationist and utterly barbaric totalitarian' regime on Abdul and his brothers.

    You do recall the numbers involved - 6 million murdered Jews and every single evidence of their existence eradicated.

    Here is a link to a breakdown of ethnicity from Auschwitz . Scoll until you see 'Total number of deportees and murdered in .'. No one is disputing the vast majority were Jewish but in fairness to others who suffered the same fate who weren't European Zionists or Jewish don't forget them.

    So should all Israeli Jews of European descent be deported back to where their ancestors were gassed and immolated.

    Stop with the 'Israeli Jews of European descent' crap. My reading of history is Hitler was allowed to round up millions of people, mostly Jews, from all across Europe in the run up to and during WW2, giving as many as possible a one way ticket to various death camps.

    Barry what about the non Jewish Europeans who also survived the Nazi death camps who had to stay in liberated Germany because they had no where else to go or didn't have the money to get a ticket back to Poland, Hungary, France...Don't read you really paying the 'Others' as listed as deportees murdered in Auschwitz much lip service. All about the Jews.

    You ask who exactly was persecuting Jews in Germany after the end of the War. The answer that there were no Jews to persecute in liberated Europe

    So if there where no Jews left, where did all the European Zionist Jews arrive fron after WW2....Alaska?

    the Jewish presence had been almost completely erased.

    So they weren't all killed. So why didn't they simply go home to what ever part of Europe they came from and try to come to terms with what they experienced. Why not return to Prague, Warsaw, Lyon? What was allowed to happen after WW2 was the Zionist agenda signed by Balfour in 1917 was honored. And because Palestine was decided on Abdul in Gaza is forced to endure the same existence as millions of people who lived and died in Nazi death camps...

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  20. Frankie

    I cannot believe I am having to say this but I will nevertheless: there is absolutely NO equivalence between the industrial mass murder of six million Jews in the Shoah/Holocaust and Israel's treatment of the Palestinian population since 1948. There is NO comparable document in Israeli history to that of the Final Solution agreed at the Wannsee Conference in January 1942 which was fully minuted; NO equivalent of the cumulative measures leading up to the order the extermination every single Jew in Reich occupied Europe- the Nuremberg Laws, Krisstallnacht, the setting up of ghettoes like Lodz in Poland where Jews were to be starved and the compulsory wearing of the Star of David.


    Yes there were many other groups persecuted by the Nazis but the eradication of the Jews was intrinsic to the Nazi project from the outset. The existence of physical survivors of the Shoah does not in any way diminish the uniqueness of the supreme crime and besides they had literally no home to go back to To equivocate Zionism with Nazism and to state that the creation of Israel was a racist and colonialist venture constitutes antisemitism according to the definition as formulated by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance and which is accepted by the UK, Scottish and Welsh governments, Crown Prosecution Service, 24 other nations and hopefully, very soon, the British Labour Party.


    But I guess there is no meeting of minds between us on this, Frankie. German and East European Jews fled to Palestine in the 1930s and 40s because doors were slammed shut in their face everywhere else.


    Btw you never addressed my point about the Native Americans.

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  21. Frankie

    Who remembers and who is calling for the right of return for 12m ethnic Germans expelled from Eastern Europe after 1945?


    Your call for the expulsion of European origin Jews from Israel/Palestine is no different from Portadown Loyalists calling for Garvaghey Road residents to be rerouted out of Ulster at the height of the Drumcree Parade crisis or that there "are no nationalist areas in Portadown only areas temporarily occupied by nationalists".

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  22. Barry,
    Read the I.H.R.A definition there, have some problems with that. The part about holding Israel to a higher standard reads to me as a precursor to making criticism of Israel illegal. For a start I don't think people do hold Israel to a greater responsibility, quite the opposite, when was the last time the bbc was critical of Israel? A million people marched to protest Labour's Iraqi war policy, they're are constant protests regarding Trump. Protests are everywhere. The U.S and allies have overthrown the Iraqi, Afghan, Lybian government and attempted to with Syria. Other countries are obviously dealt with more harshly. I don't understand, in what way is the Israeli government held to a different standard. It can't be through un sanctions, for there isn't any. The US, nato, Israel don't face reprecussions. All I can deduce from that is making pro Palestinian rallies anti semitic by law therefore illegal. That's ridiculous.

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  23. Barry,

    There is NO comparable document in Israeli history to that of the Final Solution agreed at the Wannsee Conference in January 1942 which was fully minuted;

    So Balfours 1917 declaration to Walter Rothschild stating the setting up of a Jewish homeland is what exactly? We know what Jacob Rothschild thought about it (scroll back and refresh your memory and click on the first link I posted 4:12 PM, July 18, 2018). When you fully understand the importance of the 67 word document and where Eastern European Zionists Jews come from, you will understand things more clearly.

    Last time no one is disputing the horrors inflicted on anyone in WW2, let alone justify it. Your reading of history goes along these line.....

    "There was a mad man with a dodgy moustache who suffered from little mans syndrome. And only hated Jews and only Jews died. Then the UN voted to send all the Jews back to Tel Avi, Jersualem...becuause before the war they were Abduls neighbour. And now Abduls brother has an RPG 7 inside his rolled up prayer mat and is killing Jews like Hilter and Tzars done in the past"

    But I guess there is no meeting of minds between us on this, Frankie. German and East European Jews fled to Palestine in the 1930s and 40s because doors were slammed shut in their face everywhere else.

    So they weren't semite and had no connection to Palestine. If you accept that then you have to agree on this.

    They went to Palestine because shortly after Balfours declaration, Zionists, over a dinner table discussed where exactly to set up camp. They could have easily decided Uganda, part of Russia or a few other countries.

    This is the point you fail to get Barry. Some country was going to get their ass kicked by Eastern European Zionist Jews and they had the money to do it. Just happened to be Abduls turf that drew the short straw.

    Want to find out who funded Hitler and the Nazi party or where the petrol came from to fire up the ovens where millions got turned to toast in.....click here Barry.

    Btw you never addressed my point about the Native Americans.

    I know. I will. If you end up with indigestion after reading more unpalatable truths, ain't my fault....

    Lastly I have to ask why this obsession with Israel with so many Irish people and sections of the Left (I belong to both parishes

    You know about my French connection....Spill, whats yours.

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  24. Barry,
    Let's take this logic a stage further. How about sending back every one of the USA's diasporic communities (Irish, Italian, German, Scottish etc) because of the genocide of the Native America nations and/or because of the institutionalised racism against the African American populace.


    Let's take the Scottish first.... Now the first wave of Scottish planters who came to the island raped, stole everything around them, commiting the same type of crimes as the Nazi's. Then they left the island and went to North America. Inbetween the Billy boys on the hill (Hillybilly), making whiskey they carried on their antics along the eastern seaboard going as far as Kentucky killing who ever they came across (they were better armed). The second, third waves of Scottish planter, well some also went west to America and they like the first wave brought Irish slaves across to rape black african slave women or forced black African slave men to rape Irish women slaves.Black slaves were worth more than Irish slaves. Where would you repatriated the Irish-African slaves descendants to?

    This was before the Genocide in Ireland in the late 1840's early 1850's......

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  25. David

    The IHRA definition of antisemitism does not preclude criticism of the State of Israel. It does not preclude condemnation of settlement building on the West Bank; repressive military and administrative measures on the West Bank; shooting protestors at the Gaza border fence; disproportionate IDF responses to Hamas rocket attacks etc. It is not anti-Semitic to call these Israel actions and the nationality legislation as racist which the IHRA definition of antisemitism makes quite clear.


    What the IHRA definition does rightly classify as anti-Semitic is the denial of Jewish self-determination through describing the State of Israel as a racist endeavour in origin. It also defines as anti-Semitic alleging that Jews are more loyal to Israel than their country of residence. The holding of Israel to particular standards of justice is a reference to the disproportionate condemnation of Israel by bodies like the UN Human Rights Council as compared to greater human rights violators.



    The adoption of IHRA by Labour is one that has been requested by a clear majority of Jewish community organisations including many critical of Israel and the Jewish Labour Movement on the basis that 93% of UK Jews identify in some way with Israel. It is also in accord with the Macpherson recommendations by which any incident is to be investigated as a racist or hate offence if the alleged victim perceives it as such. For Labour not to do this would constitute institutional antisemitism.

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  26. Frankie

    I have no personal connection to the Middle East but am opposed to racism of any kind(including contemporary left and Islamist antisemitism).


    I support a two-state solution in historic Palestine as both Jews and Arabs are indigenous peoples to the area and have equal entitlement to live there.


    I never said that Jews were Nazism's only victims but that they were at the top of its hierarchy of hate.


    I didn't view your Rothschild videos because I do not engage with conspiracy theories nor with the sport of twisted historical narrative that people on the far right or far left engage in.


    Ta ra.

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  27. Frankie
    I do not believe in the repatriation of any group.

    The point I was making was that the genocidal crimes perpetrated against the native Americans was far worse than any Zionist crimes, alleged or otherwise, against the Palestinian Arabs who btw are 20% Christian



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  28. Barry,
    I know what it says, but do you not think it's leading? Should anti semitic definition not be a feeling of superiority over, or hatred towards Jews. To me this feels politicised, I worry about, in future reference people equating Palestinian activists with headcases who celebrate Hitler's birthday it's counter productive on every level.

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  29. Frankie, I do not believe in the repatriation of any group.

    Really,


    How about sending back every one of the USA's diasporic communities (Irish, Italian, German, Scottish etc)

    Barry,
    Before you dig the hole you are in any deeper, go back and read the original piece.

    And if this one line doesn't say Nazism I don't know what to say....

    Nowhere in Kushner’s peek at Gaza does Israel bear any responsibility, whatsoever, for the world’s largest outdoor concentration camp which has grown exponentially more and more sadistic day by day and year by year under its complete occupation.


    These few lines could sum up your views on modern day Palestine....

    To Kushner, two million people are hostage not to the calculated systematic state terror of Israel, but rather to the PA and Hamas who choose, of their own volition, to exploit other Palestinians as mere “pawns [in] a narrative of “victimhood” so as to garner a “feel good” moment of sympathetic press while they bury their own sons and daughters.

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  30. David

    Unfortunately far too many pro-Palestinian activism and discourse use the most notorious anti-Semitic tropes (Zionist control of the media; equation of Zionism with Nazism, Jews more loyal towards Israel than their country of residence) in their campaign to demonise Israel. This is at the core of the Labour Party's antisemitism problem. I can point you in the direction of David Collier's research into the hate filled content of closed Palestine Solidarity Movement Facebook Groups.

    To repeat, the IHRA definition does not seek to suppress legitimate criticism of Israeli policies and actions (e.g. the passage of the Nation State bill) nor legitimate Palestinian advocacy. It rightly though in my view regard opposition to the existence of the State of Israel as a form of antisemitism.

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  31. antisemitism alert!!!!!!

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DKeLLlaws8

    what would u say to her barry - that shes anti-semitic!!!!!

    a hate filled facebook page is a hate filled facebook page. white phosphorous is a tad more scary. what u rather wake up to - a bit of trolling or ur skin on fire? seriously - is this the best u can come up with - a fucking facebook page?

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  32. Frankie

    I NEVER meant to say that all non-Native American groups be repatriated from the USA. I was merely postulating such a ridiculous scenario and using a little irony as a riposte to your "send them 'home' " proposal for Israeli Jews of Eastern European origin. The point that I am trying to illustrate is that the USA, Canada and Australia were much more racist and colonialist projects than Israel ever was.


    On the current state of affairs in Gaza and the West Bank, please do not put words in my mouth. The Israelis, Hamas and PA all share some responsibility for the oppressive conditions under which Palestinians live; Israel most of all, in international law, as they are the occupying power on the West Bank. But there can be no comparison with Nazism. Period.


    Frankie, your pathological opposition to the existence of Israel blinds you to any rational argumentation on Israel/Palestine perhaps because your hatred of Israel is maybe symptomatic of a generalised anti-Western worldview.

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  33. Barry,
    I never said that, I said it could very easily lead to it, I think it will. What's wrong with the original definition? If we said criticism of wahabbism was Islamophobic, would it be ok? Why the different definition for Jews? I fear it would lead to a rise in antisemitism not a decline. I.e if someone says the new Jewish nation state law could lead to discrimination against non Jews are they're automatically anti semitic? I know you touched on that but let see how it plays out, If you're against military aid from western powers to Israel are you anti semitic? If so, if you are against military deals with Saudi Arabia, are you an Isamophobe? If you call non antisemites, antisemites it could lead to apathy, therefore a rise in anti semitism. Anti semitic tropes are a mixed bag for me, some like "Jews have all the money" are obvious anti semitic comments, but some Jews are more loyal to Israel than their country of their birth, what's wrong with that? I know Scotsmen who are more loyal to Ireland, if you point that out are you anti Scot?
    I've been doing a little research on anti semitic comments in the labour party. The ones I've seen some are worrying, some just stupid and some I wouldn't even label anti semitic.

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  34. David

    Condemnation of the Nation State law is most certain not anti-Semitic nor is condemnation of Wahabbism anti-Muslim no more than condemnation of Vatican strictures on artificial contraception makes one anti-Catholic. The IHRA does not stand in the way of such condemnation.


    If you want further evidence of the contemporary left antisemitism that has infected the Labour Party go onto the Red Roar blog and www.hurryupharry.com. The problem is that Corbyn is surrounded by acolytes who hold these contemptible attitudes and because of that he will not the proper decisive action.

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  35. Barry its the weekend relax,

    I NEVER meant to say that all non-Native American groups be repatriated from the USA.

    But you did...Because I reckon the Eastern European colonizers who occupy Palestine should kindly "Fcuk off".

    The point I was making was that the genocidal crimes perpetrated against the native Americans was far worse than any Zionist crimes, alleged or otherwise, against the Palestinian

    At last you can force yourself to say "Zionist crimes, against the Palestinians....". Fcuk you are hard work Barry but at least you are starting to understand. They are Zionist first. And there is nothing alleged, the occupiers are guilty. As for Genocide, it is Genocide wether it is committed against 100,000 people of 50 million. And today in 2018 we are witnessing the slow Genocide of the Palestinian people in full HD screens 24/7...

    But there can be no comparison with Nazism. Period.

    Don't forget what Gaza is..

    Stanley L Cohen :Nowhere in Kushner’s peek at Gaza does Israel bear any responsibility, whatsoever, for the world’s largest outdoor concentration camp which has grown exponentially more and more sadistic day by day and year by year under its complete occupation.

    Barry, if you think Hitler hated only Jews, trust me he also hated flat earthers.... Hitler Rants

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  36. Frankie

    Should ethnic Russians settled in Estonia and Latvia by Stalin "fcuk off"; should Han Chinese settled in Tibet after its occupation in 1959 "fcuk off"; should Castilian Spaniards settled in the Basque country by Franco "fcuk off"; it was a never a demand of the ANC and Nelson Mandela that Afrikaaners "Fcuk off"; should Arabs settled in the Kurdish part of Iraq by Saddam Hussein "fcuk off"? A resounding NO to all these questions as it is residency of a territory not ethnicity that defines citizenship of the polity.

    So just to repeat I counterposed to your demand that East European Jews (have you heard of Sephardic Jews of North African origin who are now Netanahayu's electoral base btw?) be expelled from being part of the Original Sin of Israel a theoretical argument for the repatriation of colonists living in America for its infinitely worse treatment of its indigenous peoples. I do not support the repatriation of any group of people even on the basis of the sins of their ancestors.


    A few facts on Gaza. Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005. After being elected in 2006; Hams seized total power from Fatah in 2007 throwing Fatah members from rooftops in the process and have ruled ever since. It is under blockade from both Egypt and Israel creating intolerable conditions for its residents; conditions for which Hamas must accept some responsibility because of its habit of firing rockets at Israeli territory. But Gaza is not legally under occupation unlike the West Bank.


    Where is your evidence of genocidal intent by Israel towards the Palestinian Arab people? Where is your evidence of Israeli violations of the 1948 Genocide Convention which, among other thinks, lists as genocidal actions attempts to stop or otherwise control the biological reproduction of the group in question; killing or interment of its leading civic, spiritual and military figures and destruction of its language, cultural and heritage artefacts (e.g. ISIS destruction of Palmyra).


    I have said on more than occasion that I do not think that Hitler only hated Jews and that he had plenty of bete noires. But it became the fundamental object of the Nazi regime to kill every Jew and eradicate all evidence of their existence from Reich occupied Europe. So please do not insult my intelligence or address me in such condescending terms as "Fcuk you are hard work Barry".


    Lastly you seem to see Palestinians as an entirely without agency in their fate. Do atrocities such as the Munich and Lod Airport massacres and the more recent Hamas murder-suicide bombs in the Second Intifada in the early 2000s and the hundreds of civilian deaths they caused in Israel mean nothing to you?

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  37. Barry,

    I have re-read what you posted several times and I stand over what I said. I think you are hard work. What is the difference between a Jew, Roma, homosexual, black person being starved to death, beaten, abused in Auschwitz-Birkenau by a German boot and Allied forces doing the same to German soliders in Eisenhower's Death Camps ? Numbers, public opinion?

    "Where is your evidence of genocidal intent by Israel towards the Palestinian Arab people? "

    "Where is your evidence of Israeli violations of the 1948 Genocide Convention "

    The Genocide of the Palestinian People: An International Law and Human Rights Perspective. Secret Documents Reveal How Israel Tried to Evade International Scrutiny of Occupation In two cables from '67 and '68, Foreign Ministry officials admit violations of Geneva Conventions, instruct diplomats how to evade need for compliance by eschewing use of the word ‘occupation.’

    Barry how do the views of Auschwitz survivor Hajo Meyer sit with you? If you support the state of Israel, then you have to by extention support Zionism and Nazism. I am with Harjo.....

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  38. Frankie,
    I know the double standard on war crimes is infuriating. I.e the press have no problem criticising Russia, Assad it's saturation time concerning those two but the same outrage doesn't reach the Israeli army or nato and through frustration it's easy to lash out. That said to equate all Israelis with Zionism is nonsense and doesn't stand up to scrutiny. Your place of birth doesn't automatically shape your political opinions. I remember reading somewhere that Israel had the highest peace movements to population ratios in the world. It might be changing now but opposition to the nation state law shows social justice is still there. As far as the Nazi thing goes numerous countries/ideologies colluded with Nazism, yet don't suffer the same comparisons. The debate over the legitimacy of the state of Israel is pointless, it's going nowhere, you'd be as well arguing the legitmacy of the U.S.A. it's also counter productive, for when you highlight the appalling traetment of Palestinians the go to response fron Israeli apologists is "well their existence is under threat"

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